Implementing multi hop transmission in wireless low rate IEEE 802.11 network

Abstract

An Ad Hoc networks are becoming more important in the daily lives. It can be used to instantly connect to local or remote networks such as the internet without the need of pre-existing infrastructure or centralized administration. The users of the network together will establish the infrastructure. The disadvantage of wireless communication is that it has limited range of radio transmission. Due to this, multiple network „hops? may be needed for one node to exchange data with another across the network. In an ad hoc network, the nodes may not only operate as a host but also as a router to forwarding the packets to others nodes. There are variety of routing protocol targeted at this environment have been developed and most of them suffers from high overhead data traffic. The main purpose of this project is to develop a new routing strategy. The new routing is developed by using the existing network protocol that had been already used in network environments which is the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). This new routing is used to maintain and establish routes in a vehicular ad hoc routing network. Many of the existing strategies nowadays are wasting these resources. By extending the ARP protocol with two new operation types, ARP Forward Request and ARP Forward Reply to allow the intermediate nodes to forward the request and reply, we have successfully manage to create a multi hop transmission in ad hoc network. The data can be sent through multi hop transmission until it reaches the destination. Measurement taken from a 3 nodes of 802.11b test bed demonstrate the new routing protocol for multi hop transmission can be used in an ad hoc network and it can perform well.